Wednesday, August 10, 2016

The Navy Cottage

We are officially closed!! Now that she's ours, I want to show her to you. This will be a picture-heavy post, but there is also so much to talk about. We closed on a Friday, left that day for the week at the lake with my mother-in-law, and then the following Thursday night we headed over to this place to get settled and mostly, start cleaning. I can now say that we've cleaned top to bottom (including scrubbing down all the walls) and it was SO dirty, but I feel so much better. We're headed back for a 3 day weekend there this weekend, but unfortunately the forecast is for rain and thunderstorms. Still, we'll make the best of it.

No one has been in/used the lake house for over 2 years. They apparently had a cleaning crew (they should get their money back...seriously) come in and keep it presentable for showings, but they added this deck below literally as just a means to sell it. Honestly - I don't like it at all...there are a lot of things we would have done differently. But it is what it is and we'll tweak it to our needs. For now, it's a nice place to throw the dogs when we don't want them running free (we use a baby gate at the one entrance off the deck to block it off).

This is the back lot that we included in the purchase. It is quite large and will eventually be a nice place to park the trailer for the summer, etc. I also have ideas of putting a play house for the kids or something up there.

Lakefront. Important to note that these photos were taken very early in the season this year and when we toured the home in June it already looked much different. It had lily pads off the shore closer to the lake and some weeds and muck closer to the dock, but a good 10 feet of clear beach directly in front. It does NOT look like that now. It is totally overrun with weeds and pads. While it is illegal to remove the lily pads, we are allowed to clear a 25 x 25 foot spot in front of the beach, and a path for us to get the boat in and out. We will have to do this as every time we take the boat out now, hubby has to get it out past all the weeds into open (and deep) water, and then clean out the filter, then get under the boat and remove all the weeds wrapped around the prop. Not a feasible long-term solution. Many of our neighbors have done the same over the years and they say it's simply a process. We don't mind the pads away from the beach at all...we simply want a place for the kids to be able to play in front of the house, so initially that is what we're doing. Clearing out weeds and muck.

The dock isn't long at all - only 30 feet long. It's also only 36" wide. We've already received a quote for a new dock - 48" wide and 50' long, with a 144" wide platform at the end of it. We are trying to determine what we are going to do and in what order, but it's good to know what it will cost when we do decide.

This is the sunroom directly overlooking the deck. It was added a number of years ago and we love the extra space it adds. We've talked about adding two pull-out sofas in this room for additional sleeping space.

A view of the main area from the corner of the kitchen. This entire area is quite small, but we don't need anything large. It does need work, though. More on our plans another time.

The kitchen. Small but has everything we need (except maybe a dishwasher?).

The bathroom. Very large (much larger than needed) but gives us room to work with things. We need to re-work this though, because this is the only area we can add laundry to the home, and we really want to do this eventually.

The very small bedroom. This will be the master, though it will not have a bath attached, obviously. The bed is now gone (the mattresses were so bad) and since this isn't a room I envision us doing anything with soon, I do plan to prime and paint that paneling just to brighten up the room.

And the upstairs! Basically one large, 23x23 room that contains three twin beds already, with room for at least 3 more twins and/or fulls. More if you put in trundle beds. The angle of the roofline makes it difficult to put bunks, but this offers a TON of sleeping space with plenty of room for clothes storage as well.

So there she is! We have so many plans for her, but time and money are our limiting factors (aren't they most everyone's?). We're in the process of talking to some contractors, getting bids, etc. We've already purchased a boat lift, but ran into a snag with that which I'll discuss in another post, so nothing major has changed so far, but I will be documenting all changes here so stay tuned!